What your Project Management CV profile should say about you

The first part of your CV a hiring manager reads is (or should be) your profile – this ought to be a short statement no longer than about 80 words. The profile should be a clearly written summary of you and your skills. I have seen statements which take up half a page – too long! And ones which are a short sentence – too short. But putting the length aside, it is content which is important.

The best way to construct your profile is to think about your key skills and where your strengths lay – do not fall into the trap of creating a profile which is all about you being enthusiastic, hard working, etc as these are essential requirements for any role and as such they are expected. Instead concentrate on specific skills. For example if you are hot at financial reporting, stakeholder management, resource management etc then these are the areas you should be focussing on.

Here’s an example of a profile which doesn’t add value:

A driven and enthusiastic individual with an ability to work in a team or own initiative, good with customers and always has a positive outlook.

It is short and really doesn’t tell the hiring manager anything about your technical abilities. These are the types of attributes which will be teased out at interview – although it is unlikely you will reach interview unless the rest of the CV makes up for the lack of professional description.

Here is an example of a strong profile:

An experienced Programme Manager with accreditations to back up the practice (APMP & MSP). Overall programme responsibility for corporate wide initiatives; leading a team of 10 project managers and hands on experience of managing multiple concurrent strategic projects increasing a business’ ability to achieve its goals. Good exposure to interfacing with all levels of management and cross functionally within the organisation.

The profile tells us a great deal about the candidate such as his/her seniority, team management and that he manages projects as well as leads teams of PMs. Reading a profile like this for a programme manager role will make the hiring manager want to read on to really understand more about the programmes of work and his/her style of delivery.

Your profile should be clear and concise – stating “deliver on time and to budget” doesn’t really add value as it is expected that you can do this; that is what you are paid to do and the reality is that about 70% of projects are deemed failures due to not reaching deadlines or budgets and would it not be a great opportunity to talk about how you delivered and issues you faced in the bulk of the CV to give the reader a real understanding of how you work? Plus, I know a lot of hiring managers who would be wary of a PM who has never had any major issues managing a project – the concern being how you would deal with one if it arose.

Try to use the profile as a short snippet of what you can do – if you were at a networking event and only had a minute (or less) to describe yourself to a hiring manager to make a good impression and want him/her to take notice what would you say?

At The CV Righter we work with you to understand what you do and how you do it – from conducting a detailed discussion we can create a profile which will make the hiring manager sit up and want to read your CV, not discard it within a few seconds. www.thecvrighter.co.uk

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